“We need to make sure it is useful to staff and it will further improve our processes, procedures and programming,” Toronto District School Board chair Chris Bolton said after 18 trustees' closed-door meeting Wednesday night.

“We need more discussion,” he said, and that message will be conveyed to Education Minister Laurel Broten on Thursday. Broten had given the board a Wednesday 5 p.m. deadline to respond.

Bolton said the ministry cannot impose the team on the board; it could only come in at the invitation of trustees.

One meeting attendee said only two trustees wanted to outright reject the province's offer. Bolton said the ministry has had ample time to review an auditor's report that recommends millions in cuts and savings, and that trustees only just received it.

Sources told the Star the report says the board must close schools and contract out caretaking and maintenance jobs and also streamline purchasing and payroll. It also mentions revenue-generating ideas, but not the controversial severing of land from playgrounds.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers recommendations are largely moves the board has already considered — and resisted.

Director of Education Chris Spence said he believed trustees may consider at least some of the proposals of the audit, which trustees agreed to let the province pay for last spring in a bid to find a final $10 million savings from what began as a $108.8-million deficit.

One source said the report identifies about $13 million in savings, but only about $3 million are feasible given collective agreements the board has with maintenance and caretakers. Another said the board has already lost 600 caretakers in the past decade, and can't afford to lose any more.

Spence said in an interview after the meeting that the province’s team could be called on to give advice around implementing some of the recommendations in the Pricewaterhouse report, but upon his request and only after staff and trustees have had a chance to take a close look at it.

He said the province's assistance team is “absolutely not” supervision, but a “working partnership” with the ministry.

“We know we have challenges we need to address,” he said. “Any time you are operating a district as large as ours, with 600 sites, are there ways to do things better? Yes.”

Scarborough Trustee Elizabeth Moyer has no problem with a team coming in. “It's not costing us any money,” she said. “In my point of view, why not let them in?”

The board has seemed on a collision course with the province since spring, when the Ontario budget withdrew funding that has helped boards like the TDSB weather declining enrolment without closing schools.

While the board did balance its operating budget in June with some $51 million in staff cuts, it found itself in political hot water again in summer when Broten slapped a freeze on funding for any new capital projects, citing cost overruns and allegations of overcharging by maintenance staff revealed in a Star investigation.

Then, a proposal last month to generate $110 million by selling off portions of larger school grounds was rejected by trustees.

Some trustees who opposed the notion of selling off portions of school grounds have said they could consider the idea in future, after consulting the public and on a case-by-case basis. The proposal might arise again Wednesday night at a committee meeting.

JUNE 13: TDSB balances $3 billion budget by wiping out a $109 million deficit through cuts to, among other things, staff and administration. It agrees to let province hire auditors PriceWaterhouseCoopers to find a final $10 million in savings.

OCT 4: Education Minister Laurel Broten slaps a freeze on funding for new capital projects after discovering cost overruns on some building projects, especially some $10 million over estimates for the rebuild of historic Nelson Mandela Public School in Regent Park.

OCT. 5: TDSB director of education Chris Spence hires independent firm to review costs of Nelson Mandela rebuild; it concludes no one person or decision is at fault and cites the challenge of renovating a century-old structure.

NOV. 21: TDSB rejects staff proposal to have the Toronto Lands Corporation examine the feasibility of selling off portions of larger schoolyards, in a bid to raise some $42 million every year for three years. Some say this would have changed the board's long-range capital plan enough to persuade Broten to lift the freeze on new building.

DEC. 3: Trustees get a summary of the PricewaterhouseCoopers report that suggests they get moving on closing under-used schools and consider contracting out caretaking and maintenance and printing and other non-core services.

DEC 4: Broten sends a letter to board offering a "special assistance team" to help board tackle the report's proposals. She gives trustees till Wed. night to accept or not.

DEC. 5: If trustees reject offer, Broten says she will examine other options which could include sending in a supervisor.

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